He let out a little gasp at one point, full of surprise and luxurious delight, and that gave me a thrill because I'd never known him do anything but grunt even while he was coming. And the blood! The blood cascading in my throat was so very thick and rich, and not at all sickly, as I'd feared it might be.
I didn't feel the same kind of lift that I got from letting Maldureve feed off me. I didn't scale the heights of ecstasy. I was surprisingly calm, considering what I was doing, what I was becoming. If I was intoxicated at all it was the after-effects of the wine, not the blood. And yet, the experience was superb, after its own fashion—so very smooth, so very satisfying. It was beautiful and orderly, and I knew exactly when to stop and let Gil's flesh begin to change back again.
By morning, I knew, there'd be nothing left except a mark like a mottled lovebite, not so very different from any other purple badge of passion. He'd seen the one Maldureve left on me, but he thought it was something I did myself, with a fidgeting fingernail. I'd let him believe that, even though it wasn't very flattering to be thought of as a nervous wreck.
I'd shut my eyes while I was feeding, but I opened them again afterwards. Gil seemed to be asleep on top of me, but I didn't feel in the least sleepy. I'd never felt more awake in all my life.
I looked around, although there wasn't much to see. Even the cracks in the ill-plastered ceiling suddenly seemed to be worthy of attention. There was a pleasure in the faculty of sight itself that I'd never felt before, and I longed for something beautiful to look at.
Gil was too close, and not quite beautiful enough. It would have been perfect had Maldureve been there, standing beside the bed, looking down at me with a proud parental smile on his face, but he wasn't. I looked instead at the patterned blue lampshade masking the bedside light. It was translucent, in a papery sort of way, and I could see the glare of the electric bulb that burned inside, like a sun half hidden by a cloudy sky.
The glare seemed very bright, and I wondered whether Gil had mistakenly fitted a hundred-watt bulb where a sixty-watt would have been far more appropriate, maybe because they didn't label bulbs the same way in America, where the main's voltage was probably different. The brightness hurt my eyes but nevertheless held them captive, and the glare seemed to overwhelm the receptors in my retina, the way it sometimes does, so that everything dissolved into an expanding blur of dazzlement.
And then, realising my mistake too late, I saw the owls.
I couldn't see them clearly, because they were hiding in the light, and I couldn't make out any authentic shapes or colours in the dazzle, but I saw them. I saw their staring eyes, incredibly full of wrath, and I saw their eyes catch sight of me, and flare with anger and enmity. I saw their beaks and claws, incredibly sharp, and I saw their talons reach out towards me, avid to slash and scar.
I screamed.
I shut my eyes as tightly as I possibly could, but of course it did no good, because when your eyes are dazzled like that the retinal cells continue to sizzle and flash at your poor befuddled brain, and you can't get away from the glare.
You can't get away from the glare, or whatever is hiding within it. You can't ever get away from the owls as easily as that.
10
The owls were inside my head, and I screamed. I tried to strangle the scream, but I couldn't, any more than I could banish the owls by closing my eyes.
Gil woke up, ripping himself out of me convulsively, thrashing about in communicated panic—but only for a moment. It was more startlement than fear, and I was quick to grab him and hold him and hug him. The owls were already receding, fading away. Their talons were groping impotently in the gathering darkness; their glaring eyes were confused by crowded shadows. The phosphenes were insufficient to give them true life or real power. I knew, after the first horrid flash of panic, that I would be okay, that I was safe.
'It's all right,’ I said, urgently, with my eyes still firmly shut. ‘I'm sorry. It's all right!'
'Jesus,’ he said, complainingly. ‘You scared the shit out of me. What the hell was it?'
'A dream,’ I lied. ‘Only a dream.'
I opened my eyes again, careful not to look at the shaded bulb. The afterglow had almost faded away, and with it went the staring eyes of the owls. All they had done was stare—that was all. Reaching out with their talons had just been a tease, just a gesture to let me know that they had seen me and knew that I had seen them. They were just introducing themselves, offering ironic confirmation of Maldureve's warnings. They knew that they couldn't get to me yet. Like Maldureve at the very beginning of our acquaintance, they were quite insubstantial. They were too far out in their own borderland realm, and I knew that I'd have to see them much more clearly than that before I conceded them the power to cut and slash at me with their claws. As yet, they couldn't hurt me. I still had time to learn how to avoid them, how to keep out of their way.
I carefully eased myself away from Gil's sprawling body. I got out of bed and began to get dressed. Gil didn't want to get up. He felt weak, and I knew why.
'It's okay,’ I told him, soothingly. ‘It's fine. Don't get up. It's not late. I'll be all right.'
'Stay,’ he said. ‘You don't have to go.’ His voice was slightly slurred, and he was obviously surprised by his own lassitude. He tried to sit up, but the effort was too much for him. He put his hand to his head. So much for his pride in the strength of his constitution. The tougher they are, the further they collapse when their egos are punctured.
'I didn't bring my things,’ I said, being deliberately vague. ‘I have to get back. Stay there—there's no need for you to get up.'
He didn't take much persuading. His eyelids were heavy, and his movements were sluggish. He made one more half-hearted attempt to get out of bed, but I pushed him back, and he consented to be pushed.
'Hell and damnation,’ he said. ‘I don't know what's the matter with me.'
'Too much excitement,’ I told him. ‘Go to sleep—get some rest.'
A little later, just before I left, I kissed him on the forehead. He was already asleep. The mark on his neck was still livid and raw, but it was fading. I couldn't tell exactly how much blood I'd taken, but I knew it wasn't too much. He'd be okay. He was strong. I knew it would be easier next time. I'd weakened his resistance. His flesh would get the habit, even if his mind remained in ignorance. Soon, I'd be able to explain it to him. Not yet, but soon. I'd be able to show him what was happening, and he'd have to accept it. He'd have to admit it into his scheme of things. And afterwards, he'd have to face the same decision I had. I was confident that he'd decide to live, and feed his hunger. I was sure that once he could get his head around the idea, he'd want to be a vampire too. After all, he did love me, in his own way.
For the time being, though, it was better to let him sleep. Maybe, I thought, he would dream of the velvet shadows and the things which hid there, of the infinite possibilities which lay beyond the glare of laboratory lights, beyond the chemical fantasies of tawdry viruses. Maybe, when he woke up, he would make notes on what he'd glimpsed.
There were plenty of people about on the campus, but it wasn't difficult to avoid them. It was easy to dawdle on the bridge, listening to the rustling stream, until I was quite alone, and Maldureve could come to me from the shadows.
He seemed a little less substantial than he had before.
'This is the beginning of the end, isn't it?’ I said, realising that I'd avoided saying it out loud before. ‘Soon, you won't be able to come to me again—not to drink.’ I felt slightly sick and a little forlorn. I had been so excited about what was happening with Gil that I had set aside the question of my own loss, and what it would be like to have known that special ecstasy, and never to know it again. Feeding had been different; pleasant, but different. There was a very special joy in being a victim, in submitting, which I'd have to surrender. I wondered if Maldureve understood that. Had he been human once? Had he been some innocent child of time, before he succumbed to the caresses of some svelte
lamia? Did he still remember the glory of her glamour—or had it happened too long ago, if it had happened at all?
One day, I thought, he will tell me everything. One day, he will bare his soul to me, and tell me the inmost secrets of his heart.
'It isn't the end,’ he whispered, taking me in his arms to comfort me. ‘It isn't even the beginning of the end. It's just the beginning. I will always be here for you—always. There is much for us yet to share, and even if circumstances were to part us, still you would have the most valuable gift that is mine to bestow. All that has gone before has been a shadow and a sham; your true life, beloved, is only now beginning.'
He was right, of course. But sometimes beginnings aren't all they're cracked up to be.
According to Plato, the unborn soul has perfect knowledge, but when it becomes embodied it forgets everything, and has to go through the painful and laborious business of learning in order to catch what feeble glimpses of remembrance it can. No matter how wise a man becomes, Plato thought, he can never recover more than a tiny fraction of the enlightenment his soul once had, and the knowledge of his failure—which is, after all, a significant part of his wisdom—is a kind of tragedy. Plato, of course, was talking through his arsehole, but as Drs Gray and Chapman are fond of pointing out, the fact that he turned out in the end to be wrong about almost everything doesn't mean that he wasn't a great pioneer in the difficult business of thinking.
'I saw the owls,’ I told Maldureve.
'I know,’ he said. ‘You must be strong and clever, if you are to resist and evade them—but you can be strong, beloved. I know you can be strong, and I know that you can be clever. The owls are dangerous, but we can escape them.'
'Thanks,’ I said. ‘Thanks for everything. I can come to you again, can't I? I can come, whenever I need to see you?'
'Always,’ he assured me.
'You'll help me, won't you? You'll help me to be strong and clever?'
'To the limit of my ability,’ he promised. He said it so firmly, so confidently, that I had every confidence in him. He wasn't like Gil, possessed by the kind of shallow pride that went before a fall. He was older by far, and had all the wealth of vast experience at his fingertips. I trusted him, completely.
I trusted him absolutely, even though I really knew nothing at all about him. That's what love does to you. It makes you blind to evil possibilities. It makes you think you're safe when you're not, when you can't be. It wasn't really his fault for promising more than he could deliver; it was mine, for thinking that the limits of his ability were boundless.
I went back to my room feeling fine, certain in spite of my brief encounter with the owls that everything was right with the world. I could still feel the hunger, but it wasn't acute. I could still feel a little of the fear which the sight of the owls had awakened in me, but that wasn't acute either. I slept well, and woke up thoroughly refreshed, ready to do battle with Dr Gray and the whole world.
Our tutorial that day was about sex—or rather, it was about why sex didn't need to be dealt with, philosophically speaking, as a topic in itself. Sex, you see, raises no special moral issues. That was one of the first things they told us in the introductory lectures. I suppose it's obvious when you think about it, but it hadn't been obvious to me before. Like everyone else, I'd thought that what people meant when they talked about ‘morality’ was whether it was okay to screw around or not. By the time we had to thrash it out with Dr Gray, though, I'd learned better. I understood that moral problems were really much deeper matters, to do with causing harm to people, and that sexual behaviour had to be assessed by exactly the same standards as any other kind of behaviour.
I felt quite ready for Dr Gray—much readier, I think, than Daniel or Cynthia. Cynthia, in fact, was all fired up to take the opposite side of the case.
'It's all very well for you,’ she said to Dr Gray, ‘to sit their smugly and say that sex raises no special moral issues. It's not so easy for me.'
Dr Gray sighed. I could see that he wasn't looking forward to this particular wrangle. He was listless and bored. He was cruising on autopilot. For Cynthia, I think, that added insult to injury.
'There's a difference,’ Dr Gray pointed out, ‘between moral problems and practical problems. Your particular sexual preferences may make things more difficult for you than the preferences which are more generally sanctioned, but the morality of your sexual behaviour still has to be settled according to the same criteria which determine whether all your other actions are moral or not.'
'You think that,’ Cynthia said, ‘because you're a liberal. Other people aren't liberal, and they think that certain kinds of sexual behaviour are wrong in themselves. In the real world, criteria don't get a look-in.'
'Cynthia's right,’ said Daniel. ‘It's all very well for philosophers to say that there's some abstract realm of argument where sex is just one more thing people do, when all the Sun readers in the world just take it for granted that it's what you tell dirty jokes about. It's like saying that from a philosopher's point of view, all men are equal, when it's patently obvious that in the real world, they aren't.'
'I think that the philosopher whose point of view you're trying to distort might really have been arguing about matters of justice and the law,’ said Dr Gray. ‘It's unfortunately the case that attitudes in what you are determined to label the “real world” are not always coherent or consistent; that's why the real world needs philosophers, more desperately than it would ever dream of admitting.'
That was just the beginning. The argument went on and on. Cynthia not only wouldn't back down, but remained convinced to the bitter end that she was winning—a view which Daniel continued to support even when the hour had passed and we were all released into the bracing cold. In fact, Daniel expanded even more on the subject once he was free of Dr Gray's intimidating presence, and he invited us both back to his room in Fremantle Hall so that we could lament the unworldliness of philosophers at our leisure.
I went along. It seemed only polite, even though I knew that there was a danger that it might become a ritual, so that they would expect me to play hostess in my turn, and even though I thought they were both dead wrong. I was prepared to keep discreetly quiet about it, but I was one hundred per cent behind Dr Gray. Sex doesn't raise any special moral issues. I was glad that I'd found that out, and that my tutorial partners had pushed Dr Gray into making it so abundantly clear. I was glad because I could see that the argument applied to other things too. I was glad because it reassured me that vampirism raised no special moral issues either. Thanks to Dr Gray, I thought I could see perfectly clearly that being a vampire couldn't be deemed wrong in itself, and that the behaviour of a vampire is subject to exactly the same standards as any other kind of behaviour. It didn't matter whether vampirism was ‘natural’ or not—Dr Gray was always very firm about the abuse done to the word ‘natural’ and very scathing indeed about the commonplace assumption that what is ‘natural’ is automatically good.
While Daniel and Cynthia raged against the awful ways of the world, lamenting its petty bigotry and its oppressive intolerance, especially as manifested in the tabloid press—much as Mum and Dad would have done, with slightly different targets in mind—I followed my own private lines of reasoning. I knew how inept I still was as a philosopher, but I really thought I was beginning to get the hang of things.
There was nothing innately evil in taking blood from a human donor—how could there be, when hospitals do it all the time? As long as the donor was willing, I figured, it was perfectly okay. As long as nobody got hurt. In fact, I decided, it wasn't just okay; it was desirable. After all, a vampire needed blood to survive, or at least—so it seemed at the time—to maintain solidity, to emerge from the metaphysical borderlands into authentic physical existence. The person who gave a vampire blood was performing a noble act, all the more noble for the slight self-sacrifice involved. Surely I was a better person, from a moral point of view, when I let Maldureve suck my blood than when
I let Gil screw me? And when I took Gil's blood, in my turn, I wasn't doing anything so very terrible, even if I had to conceal the truth from him until he could understand it better. I was giving him pleasure, and I was giving him the opportunity to increase his knowledge and his powers of perception.
What greater gift could anyone possibly offer to a scientist?
I was quite clear in my own mind that I'd done nothing wrong, and that I was perfectly entitled to go on from the beginning I'd made. In fact, I figured that I not only had the right to go on, but a positive duty. I had a duty to myself, to Maldureve and to Gil. Any harm which was being done by anyone to anyone was so trivial as to be negligible, and against it one had to set a treasure trove of enlightenment and pleasure.
It was easy enough to reach that conclusion, once I'd set my mind to it. I knew that if I said it all out loud, Cynthia and Daniel wouldn't be in the least impressed, but what did they know? Weren't they just as narrow-minded as the people they were complaining about?
I thought I was right. I thought I had wisdom. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
When I went back to my room the arguments were still buzzing in my head, and I was winning them all. I had convinced myself, and then some. Vampirism wasn't wrong—not in itself. Bram Stoker couldn't have understood that, and generations of movie-addicts had never even taken the trouble to think about it, but it seemed indisputable to me. The people who were wrong were the people who thought that a vampire ought to be staked through the heart, or beheaded and burned, simply for being a vampire. I supposed that Dad, like his sixteenth-century namesake, would be perfectly happy to destroy a vampire, were he ever to be convinced that such things existed, just because it was a vampire—all the more so if he knew that it had sucked his daughter's blood—but I had no doubt at all he'd be wrong.
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